Yearly Archives: 2012

August 21, 2012. Local electeds gather in Bed-Stuy to announce their support of a bill in Congress to raise worker pay: an article by C. Zawadi Morris, Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Patch. The current minimum wage, which is at a historic low, would be estimated at $10.50 an hour if indexed with the current rate of inflation. But at its current level, a minimum wage worker earns $15,000 annually - $3,000 below the poverty line, Gillibrand pointed out. "Imagine how difficult it is to try to [...]

August 14, 2012. Mark Koba reports for CNBC. In the end, Kallick says his study is not about solving U.S. immigration problems - which seem unsolvable anytime soon. And Kallick adds that immigrants - legal or not - can't cure the nation's economic woes. But he says they have played an important part in the country's past and are needed for its future. "What we see is that immigrants don't just come to the U.S. as workers but also as consumers and entrepreneurs and that [...]

July 24, 2012. A story by Carl Campanile, New York Post.

July 23, 2012. The financial struggles faced by local governments have let to layoffs and other cutbacks. But some argue that the problems cannot by solved by cuts alone. Liz Benjamin of YNN's Capital Tonight interviews Nikki Jones of the Alliance for Quality Education, Michael Kink of Strong Economy for All, and Frank Mauro of FPI.

July 20, 2012. An article by Caroline Winter, Bloomberg Businessweek.

July 20, 2012. A digest by Maggie O'Neill, citytowninfo.com.

July 19, 2012. Job gains for the city were not enough to prevent the unemployment rate from hitting double digits, according to state data released Thursday. An article by Daniel Massey, Crain's New York Business.

July 18, 2012. A story by Joan Gralla, Reuters Macroscope. Critics say the developers - The Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group Inc - should not be tapping taxpayers' wallets, but should instead be relying on their own deep pockets. Argues James Parrott, chief economist for the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank whose funding comes primarily from foundations but which also gets some support from unions: "This represents the culmination in the evolution over the past 30 years of city business subsidies, first [...]

July 16, 2012. An article by Lisa Colangelo, New York Daily News. James Parrott of the Fiscal Policy Institute used some stark statistics to paint a picture of low-wage New York. The number of New Yorkers making less than $10 an hour jumped from 16.4% in 1990 to 18.5% in 2010. But when you take into account the size of the city’s workforce, the number of workers making less than $10 an hour increased by 42%, Parrott said. ... While higher-wage jobs have been disappearing, [...]